After waking up in the morning at our lesiure and shaking the dust out of our sleeping bags, we ate breakfast and headed back out on the trail. We'd decided that team purple (previously known as orange) would head directly down the mountain to Idyllwild while team blue would head to Reed's Meadow and then head down to the town. Both teams would collect along the way. At Reed's Meadow we (team blue) made 7 collections and listened to Rusty's story about 
being in the musical Cinderella. After almost 2 hours we headed to Saddle Junction from where we would pick up Devil's Slide trail down to Idyllwild. There, to our surprise, we happened upon team purple. We'd expected them to be an hour in front of us, but there they were. So we waited for them to pack up and head down the trail. They headed directly to the parking lot while we collected along the way. It was a long downhill in the hot sun, and we didn't find much to besides absurdly attired hikers. First, there was the man wearing a straw hat, dress shirt, and fancy shoes dragging his exhausted wife up the steep trail (Rusty described him as a "dandy"). Then there was the Boy Scout troop. They paraded up the trail, dressed up in their uniforms (with matching leather hats) and carried their troop flag proudly in front of them. And there were at least 20 of them. To say the least, they looked very comical. As a boy scout myself, I found it extremely amusing that they found it necessary to attire themselves in such a fashion on a backpacking trip. I also felt obligated to impart to everybody else that most troops did not in fact fit into that stereotypical image of Boy Scouts. I don't think anybody believed me. By the time we reached the parking lot we were exhausted and hungry, but still had to wait a long time before we were picked up by Julie and taken into Idyllwild for a late lunch. Then we headed back to the James Reserve, where we met a group of international scholars from the Society for Conservation GIS (they were spending the night on the reserve). After we finished all of our data and picture compilation/organization, we all got together and learned about one another. One of the scholars was from Zambia, another from Uganda, two from Brazil, one from Colombia, one from Argentina, one from Russia, one from Malaysia,and one from Venezuela. Sasha who is from Russia also was at the reserve with us, he is the program coordinator,Rob is from New York ,he was here to drive the scholars around , he is the president of SCGIS, and Charles who is a co-founder of SCGIS was also staying at the reserve with us . They were very cool people and they are so into conservation which is so awesome. They shared a lot of information of their careers, goals, and dreams . I wish they could have stayed longer because myself and the rest of the SCAP team wanted to learn more from them, they were amazing people. After we were introduced and got to really know each other we decided to watch Zombie land and then all join around a camp fire to have some ridiculous smores and listen to some camp fire music. Some of the foreigners didn't know how to make smore or even what it was but we had it covered, we weren't going to let them leave the reserve and continue with their work without knowing what a smore was. They loved them i am sure of it, they couldn't get enough of them. It was a perfect ending to an awesome day.
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